I Ran Buy vs Rent for 20 Years. Year 12 Changed Everything.

Two guys, same city, same salary, same $45,000 saved. One buys a house. One rents and invests the difference. Twenty years later, who's actually richer? I built the full model — real Columbus rents, real 6.8% mortgage rate, real property taxes, PMI, and maintenance. Not a hypothetical. Here's what I found: → The real monthly gap was $974, not the thousand-dollar swing most videos claim → Renting and investing was ahead for the first decade, comfortably → Year twelve is where it flips, and it flips because of one thing nobody talks about → By year twenty they're within $6,000 of each other → But one of those costs has a finish line and the other one doesn't I also run the version where you're in an expensive city, because the answer changes completely when a comparable home costs $480,000 instead of $310,000. Timestamps 00:00 Two guys, same money 01:15 Year zero — the decision 04:12 Years 1 to 5 — the grind 07:08 Year 12 — the crossover 09:52 Year 20 — the reckoning 12:13 So who actually won? 13:36 How to run this for your own city The first number to run isn't your down payment. It's your local rent-to-mortgage ratio. That tells you more about whether this works in your market than any national average. Nothing here is financial advice. I'm not an advisor and these are one set of assumptions, not yours. Run your own numbers. Which one are you — Marcus or Devin? Tell me below.